Eat Your Words
“Words issue from the lips as food enters them—though one can always take words back by eating them.”
Terry Eagleton, Consuming Passions p203.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Introduction
The aim of this project is to demonstrate that food is a system of communication and to use semiotics as a method of defining the categories into which its messages fall. It has been formed from a series of personal investigations into ritual and packaging as well as drawing upon established social and anthropological research. The focus is on ready-prepared main meals in what is rapidly becoming a post-culinary society*.
Human actions can be divided into two groups: those following pre-defined patterns and those that are spontaneous. Patterned behaviour can be read in terms of ‘connotative’ codes that, according to Stuart Hall are “particularly important as they cover the face of social life and render it classifiable, intelligible, and meaningful.”(1) These codes map out social and cultural meaning, defining the way we should behave to conform to or rebel against the conventions of the society we live in. These are absorbed by every member of a society from an early age and are so embedded in our behaviour through universal acceptance and repetition that they become almost invisible.
One patterned form of human behaviour is food preparation and consumption. For most species food fulfils a basic biological need and is generally consumed as and where it is found. However, for humans it also has a social function. We acquire, prepare and consume it according to a complex system of pre-defined rules, and it is this system of ritual that forms the basis for this project.
Claude Lévi-Strauss applied linguistic analysis to South American Indian food systems in the 1960s and a decade later anthropologist Mary Douglas became a “pioneer of the study of food within the social sciences.”(2) In her essay Coded messages(3) she explains that “the idea that food is a system of communication was much touted in the early 1970s, but no one tried to work out exactly how food communicates.”
At the time she was teaching in the anthropology department in University College, London and suggested that one of her students, Michael Nicod, study the “rules governing food in working-class London families”(3) for his masters thesis. Nicod intended to investigate the grammar of food rather than the meaning of individual elements, a methodology used by others such as Roland Barthes’ whose 1967 book Le Système du la mode was a linguistics approach to dress as a system of communication. Douglas illustrates this approach with the example:
“if a person I hardly know invites me to dinner at his house, what does it mean when baked beans on toast appear on my plate? It might mean that I am counted as an intimate friend entitled to homely food, or it might mean that I am a despised guest, unworthy of a decent dinner. It depends on the convention.”(4)
The main objective of Michael Nicod’s 1974 research project was “to test empirically the thesis that food is a medium of communication.” He explains that food is shared and exchanged and, like a language, “it affords a general set of possibilities for sending particular messages.”(5) Some forms of communication occur on a more overt level than others, food is a subtler form, the coding and decoding of the message occur on a more instinctive level. A practical example would be that different levels of meaning could be communicated through the delivery of the message: “I love you”. In choosing between spoken words, a gift of red roses or a candle-lit dinner for two.
As designers we produce visual work that conveys a message or idea to an audience. Since this requires a certain understanding of human behaviour, or anthropology, it could be suggested that one of our roles is therefore that of a visual anthropologist. This project is useful to the designer because it investigates the language of social behaviour. Analysing and shearing away the layers, examining each of the components that combine to create the overall message, will help to create a deeper understanding of the communication process and the different levels on which a message can be transmitted. This can then be applied to other areas of design.
There is no longer any need for food consumption to fit the pattern of three large meals a day, which originates with primitive man’s hunting routines. Since food is now constantly available in our society we could eat smaller and more frequent amounts which would be less stressful on the digestive system.(6)
We could also save a great deal of time* by removing the elaborate practice of conventional meals. They could be replaced by liquid-meal substitutes that are sipped through a straw whenever necessary, or taken as science-fiction style pills containing a balance of nourishment tailored to the needs of the individual.
We are, however, reluctant to change our eating patterns because the social function of food is vitally important to us. The rituals surrounding its consumption bind communities, establish and maintain bonds within them and remove a person from the rituals symbolically separating them from society. Instead, savings in time are made in the preparation of the meal and this has led to the rapid expansion of the convenience food market in recent years. The resulting hegemony of the ready-dinner within our food environment has accompanied a transition in society. We have moved away from the kitchen-centred traditions of our grandparents and towards an increasingly post-culinary state.
The ritual of eating remains important—even if it is experienced in solitude —but physical experience of cooking is rapidly being forgotten and replaced by a working knowledge of the functions of a microwave. According to Datamonitor analyst Daniel Lord “while consumers may enjoy watching cookery programmes, they are more likely to have the effect of making consumers more adventurous when they eat out than in their own kitchens. Lifestyle pressures dictate that the ready-meal has become a normal part of many people’s diets, and the market is certainly set to grow further.”(8)
Packaging, brands and cookery books are current topics in design, highlighted through comprehensive publications such as issue 17 of the AIGA journal of graphic design and Food edited by Claire Catterall. Martin Parr’s photographic observations of cultural eating stereotypes are widely published and the contradiction of the massive popularity of television chefs and cookery books at a time when more convenience food is eaten than ever before is a subject of discussion in many circles. There have been books of essays published recently covering a wide range of food issues, these include Consuming passions, food in the age of anxiety edited by Sian Griffiths and Jennifer Wallace and Sociology on the menu by Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil.
However, despite the work pioneered by Mary Douglas in this field in the early 1970s, it is a subject that has remained relatively undocumented. In her 1998 essay Coded Messages she observes that “volumes have been written about cultural theory that explains why people eat what they eat, it is partly to signal that they are not like other people.” She continues that she is “sadly aware that the comparison of food rituals and lifestyles is still a conversation that not gone far beyond the descriptive stage.”(10) The recent increase in interest in cookery, evident through the increase of books and television shows, has accompanied a growing realisation of the importance of the social function of food sharing. This is something increasingly highlighted by the exclusion felt by the growing number of people now dining alone. With the increasing awareness of categorising and marketing lifestyles by the advertising industry this is, as Mary Douglas suggests, a conversation that should continue.
*We live in a culture obsessed by the passing of time. It has become “a measure of quality, speed has become equated with excellence.” The invention of the mechanical clock is described by Lord Munford as having had a more significant effect on society than the Industrial Revolution.(7)
Figure C: Serve hot. A typeface based on the shapes of ready-made dinner trays.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
(1) D. Hebdige, Subculture, the meaning of style p 14. (2) S. Griffiths & J. Wallace, Consuming passions p vi. (3) M. Douglas, Consuming passions p 104. (4) M. Douglas, Consuming passions p 104. (5) M. Nicod, A method of eliciting the social meaning of food p 1. (6) D. Morris, The Naked Ape p 130. (7) L. Kreitzman, The 24 hour society p 65. (8) www.thefoodsite.com, (9) www.vlassic.com/swanson, (10) M. Douglas, Consuming passions p 190
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
© Sarah Hyndman 2001